Salome and Olive in the Snow

Look here - an updated post, and before the new year! And who knows, maybe I'll be able to manage one more before Christmas (which coincides with the day we embark on our journey to India).

The family took our first mini-vacation to Port Townsend, WA to visit family and we got to take a little jaunt into Seattle while we waited for the ferry. Salome said from her position on my back as we walked and saw the sights, "I am so into this." She had a ball with her cousins and developed a cousin-crush on her sweet older cousin Josef, who was very accommodating to this little girl who attached herself to him for the duration.

We got back to Missoula on Halloween day and outfitted the girls to go trick-or-treating. They dressed up as the Princess and the Pea and it was a pretty balmy October night so Salome didn't have to obscure her gown with a coat. A couple days later we sprinted over the Higgins bridge, right down the middle of the closed-off street, to marvel at the Day of the Dead Parade.

There was lots of leaf-play outside, until the snow fell, and then lots of snow-eating.

We had a sweet, quiet Thanksgiving with friends and then a big re-do with the family in Arlee, where there was epic sledding. The snow has been versatile - cold powder for eating, stickier for snowmen, kind of icy for sledding. Thanks, snow.

Olive's almost 9 months and she just sprouted two teeth. I can feel many more to come on top...those teeth took their sweet time but I think they'll all arrive at once now. She isn't crabby about it at all though - just the opposite. She's smily and grin-y and just waving her little heart out. Now the wave has finessed itself from a whole arm pump to the hand waggling at the wrist. She likes to get your attention and wave and say "Hah," when she sees you come in the room.

Salome is excited for our trip India. She wants to bring water balloons and have an early 4th birthday party there before we come back to Montana.

Appachen came for a quick visit and got us more excited for our trip with his advice, maps, and help with the itinerary. Salome was attached to him most of the time, and even Mama's-baby Olive was won over by his Appachen-charms.

Salome and Olive Usher in Autumn

I keep telling myself I'll update this blog more often so that it is more manageable, but somehow I get busy (how, I wonder?) and then I have hundreds of pictures to sort through and it takes me two months. But I'm making the promise once again, so we'll see what happens.

Olive is 8 months now, and crawling. She doesn't have any teeth yet, which is ok with me because I love baby gums so very much. She's eating solid foods and playing games such as "throw-the-object-on-the-floor-and-see-how-many-times-my-mom-hands-it-back-to-me". She does a funny squinchy face to get laughs, she kind of winks, and she loves to wave vigorously. She's very watchful and friendly, and delightfully chubby.

Salome still likes packing her little sis around, and Olive tolerates it. She loves to watch Salome, and Salome being the performer that she is, is delighted to oblige. Her favorite game lately is "Mom, pretend you are my mom and my name is Lily and this is my baby sister Lola." I can handle that game pretty easily. Just gotta remember their names, and talk exaggeratedly, saying things like, "Run along now."

There are a couple straggler photos here from the last batch (the ones of Salome and Delani). Couldn't leave them out though...

We soaked up the rest of the summer and GORGEOUS fall, going to the farmer's market (where Salome got her face painted), visiting the river, and attending a couple more weddings to finish out the season.

Salome's second cousin Savanna got to come from Washington to visit and it was a fantastic girl fest, as you can see from the bathtub picture.

There will be more pictures from this fall in the next installment, and soon some snow pictures it looks like. Here comes winter...

Salome and Olive's Summertime

It's been months since I last posted and Olive is way bigger now...

She's almost 6 months old now, sitting up, laughing at her big sister, and putting all sorts of things in her mouth.

I ran out of room to upload all the summer photos so these aren't quite current - it'll take another blog post to get me caught up. These photos are up till 4 months maybe.

Anyway, we've had a great summer full of sun (and rain) and fun, and 5 weddings.

Salome and Olive are nuts about each other - Salome wants to hold Olive whenever possible, which Olive tolerates till she gets joggled and tipped too much. She could watch Salome all day though, which Salome eats up (she loves an audience.) She sings and dances and jumps on the bed for Olive and Olive gawks with an open-mouthed grin.

We got 3 Auntie Hilly-visits out of the summer, which we all loved, especially Salome. They have a ball together, and Skype keeps Hilly's eyeballs on her growing nieces till the next visit.

We also had one really great extended visit from Aunt Sherry and cousins Daniel and Delani, and then Ammachi, Appachen, and Molly Ammachi in July. Delani and Salome played and fought like sisters and it was great to have the family all together.

Olive is still happy and mellow. She is starting to reach and lean for me when others hold her, but is often happy and content to be in another's arms. For a couple days there, she was growling in response to our growls and very pleased with her trick. We were too.

Salome is still a little firecracker who makes me laugh everyday. The latest comment that made me laugh out loud came when her papa said "Hey Salome should we go look at a stroller for you and Olive that we can take to India this winter?" and she replied, "No, Papa, we need to take an airplane to India."

Yep, probably too far to walk.

Olive Arrives

Well so much for early April. But I guess anytime is a good time to introduce Baby Olive.

She came at 5:44 in the morning on March 19th, which is her Appachen's birthday. She looked teeny tiny to us, which made sense when we found that she weighed 6 1/2 lb. She has tons of hair, as you can see, and lots of eyelashes. She looks about as much like her papa as she can, and I am once again in the position of looking more like a nanny than a mama to my beautiful girls. :)

Salome didn't wake up till 9 o'clock on the morning of Olive's birth, so she awoke to find her world changed. She was shy at first and didn't say much but then after she was set next to her new sister she said, "It's kicking me!" Then she wanted to put a barrette in Olive's hair and went downstairs all by herself to get one. She preferred to call Olive "Peter Lucas" for the first day or two, but that soon fell by the wayside.

We've had so much fun adjusting to our family of four. Olive is mellow and happy and loves staring at the dark brown paint trim against the white ceilings. She started smiling at us when she was about 4 weeks old. (She's now 5 weeks.) Salome is just as busy and imaginative as ever and has been drawing lots of pictures of our newly bigger family and writing our names.

She is naturally sometimes peeved at the baby who is almost always attached to me, but mostly she really likes this new baby. When Olive cries, she tells me, "Mom, nurse her. She's crying." She loves to hold her and pet her face and put things like pencils in her fists. She also likes making Olive's little fingers do sign language letters and other symbols. "Look, Mom she's doing "L"/"thumbs up"/"peace!" Sometimes in the morning, she wakes up and says, "How's Olive doing?" and then talks to her, "Hi girl, how are you? Do you love me?" and then sings to her loudly.

We're looking forward to the rest of spring and then summer to enjoy with our girls and we'll keep you posted...

Salome Is a Singleton For Not Much Longer

Our next post will be from a family of four...

But for now, the last of the adventures of Salome the Single Child. She turned 3 last month, which was preceded by a trip to FL to visit Appachen and Ammachi. She had a good time eating citrus up the wazoo. And Appachen taught her to drive.

The day after we returned from FL was Salome's birthday so we had a little cupcake party with her playgroup friends, and then the following weekend we had a party with family. She was pretty excited about all her birthday festivities and decided for a couple days there that she'd rather be 4. But now she's 3 again, and loving it. She makes note of her age fairly often now.

A few of her friends turned 3 right around the same time so she got to enjoy other kids' parties too. Her friend Mila had her party at an inside waterslide pool and Salome was very brave and went down the kiddie slide several times and "swam" around in the shallows.

While Papa was away on business, Salome and I went to Bigfork up at the lake and visited friends for a weekend. Salome got to play with all her grown-up friends and even ride a 4-wheeler.

She anxiously awaited the arrival of "her baby", taking part in the prenatal appointments (usually by sitting on top of me with a measuring tape), drawing lots of pictures of our family with the baby making four, and asking me "When is the baby gonna come out? This is taking a really long time."

We have so enjoyed this little girl and all the fun and life she has brought to us, and now we get to look forward to another little being that will multiply our happiness. I'll work on getting the next blog post out by early April to introduce you to the new baby, thus beginning my new career as a blogging mother of 2.

Salome Since Christmas

It's been since before Christmas and before snow..before lots of things, I guess, since we've updated.
Salome had a fun Christmas this year - she really knew what it was and looked forward to it. She loved her stocking and the gifts she received, especially a 15+-year-old previously-owned baby doll with a bottle full of white and purple milk. We spent the day in Arlee with the family - the first time in many years since the whole family has been together on Christmas Day.
For New Years we got to go to Whitefish with Aunty Hilly and friends and spend a couple nights on the ski hill. Salome was set on building an igloo (like Max on the movie of "Where the Wild Things Are".) Her papa and Uncle Jesse made a valiant effort but it caved in. But it was good enough for Salome.
We had our last visit with Great-Grandma Alice after Christmas, about one month before she passed away. Salome drew pictures for her and it was so lovely to hear the stories from her childhood and gain some wisdom from her long life. We are so glad Salome got to visit her as much as we've gotten to in the last year or so. When Salome was told of her death, she said, "But I don't want her to be dead." She was a great lady and we miss her.
Because of all the snow and ice, Salome has gotten in a lot of winter sports - first time skiing and sledding, and even sledding. We also built a snow family, including Salome's baby sister, Peter (still don't know what we're having, btw) being held by the Snow Mama.
Another new-ish development has been Grandma Jany's cancer treatment. She's undergone a few new hairstyles by now, and Salome was there for one big haircut right before chemo started, and then we were there for Grandma's first chemo (in 20 years). It was more fun for Salome than Grandma probably - she got an IV drip straight to her vena cava and Salome got juice and snacks and coloring books.
Well, it's only 6 weeks until Salome is a big sister, so I'll try to update with another blog entry once more before they become even fewer and farther between...:) We'll soon have two little people to follow...

Salome's Thanksgiving and Subsequent Trip To Cincinnati

Well there aren't any snow pictures in this batch, but there sure will in the next one.

Earlier in November we started painting the walls in our garage addition out back, and Salome was an eager helper. She painted portraits of our family with a brush while we rolled the paint on, and she really started to look the part of the dedicated artist, sans shirt and splattered with paint.

She also made the most of our sad fall leaves situation (the extreme cold snap in Oct. froze the leaves right onto the trees, where most of them are still clinging to the branches, and none of them changed colors) and went sledding in them, raked them, and jumped in the piles.

She is still drawing every day and getting more detailed in her marks and in her descriptions.

We had a marvelous Thanksgiving Day out in Arlee at Grandpa and Grandma's house, where Salome annihilated a turkey leg and did her best to get in the mix during our traditional game of Cranium. Some of us took a little break to walk off some of the day's feast and trundled up to the Pow Wow grounds. Although the little kids did more running than walking - the feasting didn't seem to make them sluggish...

The next day, Salome and I flew to Cincinnati for a week to visit Auntie Hilly and Uncle Jacob. We got to spend the weekend with them both before Hilly had to get back to school for more study of the law (yikes, may I say.) Jacob prepared a whole second Thanksgiving dinner, not to mention plenty of baked goods, and a feast every night of the week. Salome enjoyed wrestling, reading, and clinging like a monkey to her auntie and uncle and we really had fun being in their neck of the woods. Jacob was also kind enough to chauffer us to Indiana one afternoon to meet our friends Natalia and Spiro and their baby Sofia from Chicago. Salome was nearly dwarfed by 6-month-old Sofia, but that didn't stop her from wanting to hold her.

Suresh was on business in Germany while we were in Cincinnati, but we were lucky enough to get to meet up with him in Minneapolis on the way home, and fly to Missoula as a threesome. It was a great end to the trip.

Last weekend there were plenty of Christmas activities going on in Missoula, so we took Salome to decorate cookies, make crafts at the library, and ended the evening downtown, where we got to see Santa Claus (two actually - one in a meter maid car, one on a sleigh with Mrs. Claus) in a parade. I considered it a good parade because it was cold enough that they threw chocolate...

Anyway, as Salome's Big Sister-dom approaches, she is fully enjoying squeezing, poking, patting and talking to my belly and has big plans for when her baby gets here. She wants to hide the baby's eyes during scary parts in movies, read books with her, and possible even nurse her. (I refer to the baby as "her" because Salome only calls it a sister and now I'm getting really used to it.)